Fifty years ago there was only one answer. We were
Americans, and most knew what that meant. When American
principles were found lacking in practice, reformers
stepped forth. In those days, reform meant to apply the
principles, not to overthrow them.

Today there are as many answers to the questions as
there are hyphenated-Americans and organized "victim
groups."
Assimilation is no longer a function of
America's educational system. Not even native-born
whites are being assimilated. The real answer to the
questions is that America is a
Tower of Babel, not only in races, languages,
religions and cultures, but also in beliefs.

Multiculturalism teaches that all cultures are equal
with the exception of traditional American culture,
which is a racist, sexist, homophobic, hegemonic white
male engine of oppression. The formerly venerated
Founding Fathers are despised as "hegemonic oppressors."
A
common interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is
that it is an anti-democratic device for protecting rich
property owners and
"hate speech" offensive to minorities and women.

With the cement gone, what once was a nation is
dissolving into a collection of victim groups taught to
regard white males as oppressors. We are left with a
thin gruel of comity between the races and the genders.

Hatred cannot be taught without consequences.

Communists taught hatred of the upper classes, and
the result was tens of millions murdered in Russia and
China.

Now it is whites who are demonized. Earlier this year
a number of black youths were arrested in idyllic
Charlottesville, Virginia, for a series of brutal
racial attacks on white university students.
Just the other day, when Cincinnati police broke up
a street fight between two teenage girls, 300 blacks
shouting "get whitey" attacked the police and white
motorists who were driving by.

Nonwhites feel confident and justified in assaulting
whites. Nonwhites have been taught that they are victims
of white oppressors and that they are justified in
responding to oppression with violence.

Nonwhites have learned that, despite the "hegemonic"
white power structure, they have little to fear from
confrontations with white students. A double-standard
operates. Hispanic violence is due to "anger and
resentment" and is met with "understanding," but whites
who responded to violence with violence would definitely
face expulsion and hate-crime charges.

In multiculturalspeak, whites lack the moral status
of a victim group. When whites are beaten and shouted
down, it is seen as retribution. The confidence and
courage of whites to defend free speech is undermined,
because everything whites say can be said to be
"offensive" to preferred minorities.

"Anger and resentment" has also become a protective
cover for
women's violence against men.

Once violence is exonerated by "understanding" the
motives, all constraint is gone. Donald Kagan, perhaps
Yale's most
distinguished scholar, writes in the
current issue of the Intercollegiate Review that
among the faculties of the prestige universities, the
main response to 9/11 is to sympathize with the
desperate, angry and bereaved Muslims who,
understandably, replied to offensive cultural messages
with violence.

A country, especially a moralistic one, whose
intellectual elites do not believe its history and
culture are defensible, and whose
politicians will not protect its borders from
illegal immigration, will become a country whose youth
will not serve it in combat.

The U.S. does more to
defend the borders of
Kosovo and Bosnia than it does to secure its own
border with Mexico. How long can a country, portrayed by
its own educators as a bastion of white racism, continue
to bomb brown-skinned Muslims in a war on terror?

We are
told that the war on terror will last for years, but
where is the belief system to sustain it?